


Field Experiments

by fuzzybatbutts



Category: Apex Legends (Video Games)
Genre: Amputation, Author Is Sleep Deprived, Blood and Injury, Blood and Violence, Explosions, For Science!, Gen, Grenades, Hallucinations, Hallucinogens, Hurt No Comfort, Knives, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Nonbinary Character, Not Beta Read, Science Experiments, Self-Harm, Self-Indulgent, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-11
Updated: 2019-10-11
Packaged: 2020-12-09 04:42:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20989028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fuzzybatbutts/pseuds/fuzzybatbutts
Summary: Most participate in the Apex Games for fame or fortune. Caustic on the other hand, just has some tests to run.





	Field Experiments

**Author's Note:**

> UPDATE PLEASE READ!!
> 
> So my beta and I have a discord now!! It's specifically for fans of apex who love dark fiction, so if you like this series it'll be right up your alley!! It was created since I got booted from an apex server for posting noncon so it's to protect us fans who the purity police deem problematic. Nothing is too far and there's specifically a blacklist channel for those of us who love the nastiest of the nasty. :D if the link doesnt cooporate, lemme know and I'll find a way to send it to you ^^  
https://discord.gg/xNkTyCV
> 
> "iF yOu LiKe CAuSTiC You'RE A BaD PErSoN!! HoW CAn YoU LikE SOMeOnE WhO KiLls PEopLE??"
> 
> Why the f do you think I like him so much in the first place?
> 
> Anyway purity police, leave me and my stinky gas man in peace k thx bye

-Subject A: Elliott Witt (AKA Mirage)

-Results: Inconclusive Due to Mechanical Failure

Mirage wasn’t on top of the list when it came to complex targets. His fighting style in the ring though aggressive, lacked much in terms of originality. Witt fell into the category of legends that were reliant on some form of technology to enhance their abilities enough to make them competitive. Such reliance gave way to patterns, patterns into habit, and habit into something that Alexander could use. A subcategory of the former was those whose technology slotted them into an offensive or defensive role, while others were lumped into the scouting or healing. Mirage was purely offensive with little care given to defensive maneuvering beyond the burst of clones upon falling. Find the epicenter of the clone burst, and you’d see the telltale glimmer of the cloaking device rendering it completely useless. 

Alexander shifted in the doorway where he stood, triple checking the gas mask and it’s connections to the various oxygen canisters that rattled together. Mirage’s status as the rings resident loudmouth made tracking pathetically simple. It was less a problem of skill and more-so the quality of one’s hearing, though with Witt yelling and stuttering like an excited child even someone half-deaf could probably track him down. His squad was jogging towards the set of buildings, chattering to each other and checking their weapons in case of a fight. There wouldn’t be much of one, if he could help it. Every door was affixed with several gas traps along with ones on the underside of houses to leak their way up through the floorboards in case the ones in the doorway were disposed of. 

Excited, cheery, voices grew closer and closer and Alexander rested his hand on the strap that kept the carbine nestled close to his chest. He knew they’d soon split as they always did, individually checking each house and hoping the others wouldn’t stray too far. Only a child would call such a thing strategy, though Witt certainly acted like an overgrown child so it was only appropriate his strategic mind was as weak as the rest of him. Peering through a crack in the wood, he saw them all break apart and head to different houses, backs all turned to him carelessly. Witt was the furthest from him, which only meant he’d have a larger grace period before he’d have to worry about the semi-competent legend being a threat. 

Once the doors closed behind them, the screaming started.

A lovely, though somewhat headache inducing sound. Alexander cracked his knuckles before dashing from his hiding place, racing to the first house before they could get their bearings and he’d have to risk a bullet to the head. The gas wasn’t of a strength to be immediately debilitating, but it would make his life a whole lot easier if they couldn’t see. The door of the first house remained sealed with the greenish gas trickling out from underneath the doorframe. Based on the severity of the coughing from within, there was little to worry about in terms of the gas not having the desired effect. It was a newer strain that he’d been eager to test as soon as he landed, not wanting to risk it later on in the game if it didn’t perform as expected. 

Through the window he could see a body writhing on the floor. They looked young, fairly small and without anything to protect their face. Alexander watched as their body jackknifed, seizing and jerking around awkwardly, resulting in them slamming their head into the baseboards. Whether it was a result of muscle spasming or their own desperate attempts to escape the area early didn’t matter, as their head cracked open with a final bang and their body went limp, save for the occasional twitch like a partially crushed insect. 

A creak sounded behind him as the door to the second house was thrown open. A female crawled her way out, sputtering and clutching her chest with her hand. Alexander sighed and strolled over, annoyed that he’d have to waste such a prime test subject. She looked up at him, fear plain on her face. It wasn’t a sight he enjoyed, so when he placed the barrel of the carbine against her forehead and pulled the trigger, he felt nothing but irritation at the failure of that experiment. 

He hadn’t heard anything from the house that Witt was in. The gas had deployed, but there was nothing beyond the hiss of the release mechanism. Alexander pressed himself against the second house, letting the smog conceal him as he watched intently. His patience was rewarded when, rather dramatically, Witt burst through the window of the house and landed hard on the ground, glass littering the dirt around him. He wretched violently, doubling over and gasping like a fish. It was so nice to see him using his mouth for something other than idiotic quips. 

While Witt was down, Alexander took the opportunity to pull a gas grenade from his belt and prime it. There’d been no explosion of duplicates when he’d hit the ground, so he must have been in better shape than he looked if it didn’t deploy automatically. The grenade was of a new design, much more…  _ impactful _ than the last ones he’d employed in the ring. He walked over to Witt, tossing it up and down in his hand to test the weight. He seemed like he’d be able to stand soon, so Alexander chucked it in an upwards arch and smiled when it landed directly at his feet. Witt panicked, trying to bat the grenade away but the gas had sapped his coordination so all he could muster was to weakly paw at it instead. His eyes grew wide as the light on the grenade went red, and Alexander covered his ears with his hands as the canister exploded. 

The shock wave was much more intense than he’d expected, knocking him back and kicking his knees out from under him. For a moment he knelt on the ground, shaking off the wave of dizziness and vertigo that had crept up on him. Gas poured from the blast site which was a good sign, but the amount of screaming was less so. Witt should have been coughing up a lung, choking on bile and mostly unable to make a sound. Instead the screams were frenzied, borderline hysterical and extremely loud. Alexander got to his feet and waded through the gas cloud, taking note of the amount of blood that dotted the earth. It was too far away for it to have come from Witt’s mouth and the wasn’t mixed with a caustic agent so it shouldn’t have damaged his skin. Finally, he found the epicenter of the screams, and he tilted his head trying to figure out what went wrong. 

Witt was laying on his side, clutching a mangled limb that couldn’t really be called an arm anymore. It was shredded, strips of flesh hanging from his elbow and embedded with fragments of bone. It was a pulpy, bloody mess, but his leg had taken the brunt of the explosion. There was nothing left below the knee besides a sharp piece of the tibula that resembled a knife point, and it explained the amount of blood that Witt was covered in. The gas was too thick to try and find the remnants of his flesh, so Alexander stood for a moment and took note of how much blood was pouring from the stump. His femoral artery was gushing like a fountain and he knew Witt wouldn’t last another minute before slipping into unconsciousness. 

There must have been far too much of the explosive material which caused shrapnel to chew up his arm and the blast to blow through his leg. Though technically a failure due to the lack of results from the gas, Alexander noted the ratio he’d used and adjusted it mentally as he walked away, leaving Witt to scream alone in the dirt. Perhaps some other squad would come along and put the boy out of his misery, but Alexander couldn’t be bothered to waste a bullet on a dead man. 

-Subject B: Bloodhound (Other Alias’ Unknown)

-Results: Exceeds Expectations

Bloodhound posed a challenge. They were a worthy adversary, having shown their competence more than once and their skill at tracking others was renowned for a reason. It was a matter of hunting the hunter, and getting the drop on them before they suspected anything was especially long. Champions didn’t have as many victories under their belt as Bloodhound without being cautious, but being overly-cautious was just as dangerous as throwing it to the wind. They’d prioritize getting a weapon over a shield, leaving them vulnerable for a short time if he could keep his distance. The longbow would be the delivery method, and as long as he stayed behind them there’d be no tracks for them to follow. Bloodhound’s area of effect for their vision enhancer was close enough that he was no danger of them spotting him too early and ending the experiment before it began. They were with a squad, but Bloodhound was the only one he cared about. 

From his perch atop a cliff he readied the bullets. He produced a small metal tin and cracked it open, dipping three of the bullets inside the dark green liquid inside. It reeked of ethanol, but a tincture was the most potent form he could make and this was designed to be an experiment of extremes. It had taken a lot of effort to smuggle it in, and he wasn’t about to waste such an opportunity when it had taken so long to acquire it. The bullets soaked in the solution as he waited, laying on his stomach with the longbow resting comfortably on its bipod. 

There, movement from the east. Bloodhound and their grew were running across a large, open plain down in the valley below. Cliffs rose up on all sides, and it was the perfect spot for an ambush. Carefully, he picked up one of the bullets and slid it into place, pulling back the bolt and looking through the scope. As he suspected, they had a rifle on their back and a knife at their hip, but there was no sheen of a shield on their body and with a high loot area at the end of the pass, this was going to be the best chance he had at taking a shot. He inhaled and held his breath, catching Bloodhound in the crosshairs and following them as they ran. He exhaled, and squeezed the trigger as the final bit of breath passed his lips. After a second of pause, blood sprayed from their shoulder and they went down hard, tripping over their own feet. Their teammates struggled to slow down and try to take note of where the shot had come from, but he was well concealed and they were already dead regardless. They were looking at the very tops of the cliffs, not the low position he’d placed himself in. 

He watched, not wanting to blink in case he missed it. Bloodhound held their shoulder, trying to stop the bleeding but no one on their team looked to have a medkit. A medkit likely wouldn’t have stopped the process, but it was good to know none of the others would have the luxury of one either. Bloodhound wasn’t a big person, and with the concentration of the tincture at around 90%, he wasn’t surprised when they showed signs after only a minute. They’d begun to tremble, shaking their head every few seconds trying to get a hold of things. One of their knees gave out and they dropped, clutching their chest tighter as they swayed side to side. One of their teammates walked over, reaching out a hand to help them to their feet and Alexander smiled as they batted it away. He could just faintly hear them as they scuttled backwards, crawling away from their teammates much to their confusion. 

“N-No! S-stay back!”

Bloodhound’s voice was rising rapidly, fearing infecting it and spreading through their body as the tincture did the same. Their head darted around, trying to take in whatever visions they were seeing. Salvia divinorum, known for its particularly nasty highs that even experienced hallucinogen users avoided like the plague. It was also called “Sage of the Diviners”, so Alexander had thought it appropriate to try out its effects on someone known for their near ancient, almost mystical beliefs. First, Hound would start to feel extreme feelings of dysphoria, followed by a separation from their own body. The hallucinations would creep in next, morphing the landscape around them from a normal valley to some hellscape that Alexander could only dream of. He’d taken a low dose as a baseline so he’d know roughly what others would experience, but Bloodhounds was triple the amount and purified so it would hit as hard as it could. 

Paranoia looked like it had started to set in, as they screamed at their teammates to get back, drawing their knife and jabbing it at their outstretched hands. Reflexively, one moved their hand to their weapon, and it was all Bloodhound needed to fully shatter. They jumped on the boy, whirling around as they stepped into them and landed an elbow directly to their neck. He dropped, and they turned to the other man that now had his rifle raised and pointed at their head. With a speed that Alexander had never witness, they side stepped so the bullet buried itself in the dirt and flung their knife with reckless abandon. It hit its mark, embedding itself into his forehead and dropping him like a bag of bricks. They straddled his body and ripped the knife from his skull with a sickening  _ pop,  _ slamming it down into their chest before tearing it free again and repeating. They struck with such force that the corpses limbs jumped off the ground with each stab, but Bloodhound showed no sign of stopping. Whatever it was they saw, it wasn’t dead yet. Their blade caught on something deep in the man’s chest, and they let out a terrified wail when they couldn’t pull it free. 

The second man was still alive, crawling away from the crazed hunter as their strength returned. They were calling for help, begging the indifferent cliffs for aid. Bloodhound didn’t give them a chance to get far, stumbling towards them after kicking the corpse aside with a faster pace than the downed man could muster. It was more of a shamble, their hands pressed tightly against their ears as they screamed something. 

“Haltu kjafti!” they shrieked, falling on top of the crawling man and grabbing his head tightly, “Haltu kjafti!”

With the man’s head tightly in their grasp, they slammed it into the ground, repeating the phrase with each frantic blow. Caustic slipped from his hiding place and walked towards them, wincing sympathetically as the man’s skull fractured under the pressure and his speech became more and more slurred. Even after he stopped making noise, Bloodhound didn’t. They kept beating on the body, uncoordinated but brutal. Alexander stopped at the first corpse, examining the remains as best he could. Bloodhound had essentially carved a hole through his chest, turning the flesh to mush until the blade had gotten caught in between two vertebrae. He grabbed the knife and pulled at it with a grunt, but it didn’t budge. Placing his boot on its chest, he braced properly and yanked the knife free, wiping the blade on his apron. Seeing their reaction had given him an idea.

“I see you’re handling it well.”

They spun around and yelped, leaping from the body and crouching low to the ground. With each step he took towards them, they took one back, shaking like a leaf. 

“ Farðu í burtu!”

“I’m sorry, I don’t quite understand.”

Bloodhound stopped moving back and moaned loudly, clawing at their head. “What… what did you do,” they demanded weakly, “What have you done to me?!”

“Oh it’s quite simple,” he explained, “A simple hallucinogen soaked bullet was all it took, and you’re reacting quite wonderfully. Those poor fools, you’ve made quite a mess.”

Bloodhound shook their head violently. “No, no! They were not… I did not mean…”

“Oh no they were quite human, no matter what your poor, confused little head told you.”

They moaned again, but this time one of sorrow that crawled its way up their throat. “It hurts,” they croaked, “it hurts so bad.”

“Tell me what you feel Bloodhound. I can make it better, but you need to tell me what you see.”

“No, no not see,” they started scratching at their arms, “Feel. I can feel them.”

“Feel?”

“Yes!” they exclaimed, frustrated, “Yes, under my skin. I can feel them beneath…”

_ Interesting… _

One of the most commonly reported side effects of Salvia was the sensation of bugs under the skin. He was surprised it was kicking in so fast, as it usually set in close to the end of the high. Bloodhound was reacting beautifully, just as planned.

He watched as they tore off their gloves so they could scratch better, throwing them aside and digging their nails in harder under their sleeves. “How many are there?”

“Help me!”

Alexander shook his head. “No not yet. You answer my question, then I help.”

Their scratching intensified. “So many, so, so many. I do not know. Just so many, please, please, _please_ _help me_.”

Hearing Bloodhound beg was an unexpected side effect, though one he was happy to experience. They’d always had a proud streak, but apparently it wasn’t as rigid as he’d thought. Already being reduced to this state, it must have been truly awful whatever they were experiencing. Alexander knelt down to be at eye level with them, and they looked up desperate for relief. “There’s only one way to stop it. If I tell you, you promise you’ll do it?”

“Yes! Yes, just tell me,” they hissed, pain from their clawing starting to set in.

“If there’s bug under your skin, you just have to get them out.”

He handed them their own knife, curiosity taking over his cautious side. 

“What?”

“All you have to do is get them out,” he said, as he pushed the knife hilt first in their direction.

Bloodhound’s hands were shaking so hard he didn’t know if they could even grab the knife. Their nails were ragged and blood had crusted under the nails, but their grip on the knife was strong. For a moment they just stared at it, and Alexander worried that he may have made a fatal mistake, but when they pulled it close to their arm, he knew the gamble had paid off.

With a final cry, Bloodhound stabbed into their own forearm, tearing open the skin and sleeve of their shirt, hacking away at it to remove whatever things apparently lurked underneath. Alexander watched as the tendons they’d exposed tensed and eventually snapped as they sawed through. Once they were satisfied, they turned the knife to their now barely functioning hand and sliced into their other arm, cries of pain mixing with the terrified howls as they gouged at their own flesh. Eventually, the damage grew too great and their hand just went limp, nearly severed with knife marks carved into the bone. They dropped the knife and collapsed, shivering as their blood flowed freely onto the grass. 

For the second time an experiment hadn’t gone as planned, though this one he could consider a wild success. As he walked, he thought about other applications the drug could have, and what possible repeat exposure could look like. Bloodhound was laying in the grass dying, but there would be other games where he could find them and see for himself exactly how far he could push them. 

It was an experiment worth examining further, indeed. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> (Hey Curvy, here's your Mirage grenade amputation) 
> 
> So I'm horrendously petty
> 
> I went into the Apex tag on tumblr for the first time in about two months and it was all just "If you like Caustic you're a horrible, disgusting person how dare you enjoy an evil character who does evil things you're just an incel how dare you enjoy different things from me if you don't give me a 5 page paper with 10 point arial font on why he's a bad person and how you don't agree with what he does every time you mention his name, you CLEARLY condone his actions and you're just as bad. NEVER EVER write horror/not fluffy Apex fics only cute things allowed. Sorry sweetie i diagnose you with problematic."
> 
> So I wrote a fic about Caustic being awful and evil and a meanie because SHOCKINGLY this isn't ur christian minecraft server and ur not my mom, random tumblr bloggers. If y'all like it I'll do more Caustic stuff.
> 
> Did i mention I'm petty?
> 
> (Also All's Fair in Love and War broke 1000 hits so this is also me celebrating. Now I'll go back to not-demon Bloodhound ruining Elliott's day. Cheers)  
-P


End file.
